Remember not to become TOO successful with Poco Mail. If you do, you run the risk of becoming -- at least by some definitions -- part of "big business." Who knows what'll happen then??

Gary Speer

P. S. That was a lame attempt at sarcasm -- in reality, I love all the Google products I've tried; I can't seem to work up sufficient paranoia to reject Google's stuff, and I would vote IN FAVOR of asking you or someone to do a plug-in to enable Google Desktop to index my Poco Mail.

Truth is that my paranoia should not stop Slaven from providing a product that his customers want. However it's not "big business" as such that worries me, part of the issue I have is the constantly increasing demands to know more about me, what I do, where I search or visit on the internet, track follow etc.

As Google grows it needs to find more sources of revenue - and once you've gone public then you have to because that is what the shareholders expect - growth. And in a market like their's that growth comes from selling information, and that information is about you and me and everybody else who uses the internet. And I don't feel that I want that much known about me and what I do on the internet so that I can be "targetted". [Imgine wandering around the local shops with someone following you, watching what you are looking at then constantly offering you things.] Paranoia - maybe, healthy scepticism - certainly.

There is a big public debate about the proposed identity cards for the UK. Many countries have ID cards and it is not the cards themselves that are the issue, it is the amount of private information that the scheme looks likely to want to collect and how that information will be used to provide additional "revenue" to the government agency that administers the scheme (partly to offset the enormous costs of setting up the scheme in the first place).

As far as I am concerned, Poco Systems can grow as big as it wants to - when I get worried is when PocoMail 8 looks at what is in each of my messages and my contacts and helpfully provides links to web pages that I might be interested in, records on a central server who I'm taling with (etc ect - it won't, but you get the picture).

robin wrote:As far as I am concerned, Poco Systems can grow as big as it wants to - when I get worried is when PocoMail 8 looks at what is in each of my messages and my contacts and helpfully provides links to web pages that I might be interested in, records on a central server who I'm taling with (etc ect - it won't, but you get the picture).

Yahoo just got busted for giving the Chinese info on a reporter using it's services and now that reporter is sitting in a Chinese jail.